A new study shows for the first time that playing action video games improves not just the skills taught in the game, but learning capabilities more generally.

Common sense (and of course, my biases) have always led me to believe this. When you play a videogame, especially a difficult one, you have to learn a complex system that gives you immediate feedback on how to improve within it. Learning, in general, is pretty much the same process - understanding a system and functioning within its parameters. So it only stands to reason that getting good at videogames would teach you how to quickly understand systems and exploit them, and therefore, how to learn other things more quickly as well.

Anecdotally I have always thought that some types of video games really improve your learning while others hurt it. I feel like RTS and strategy games really improve your ability to think and learn. Conversely I feel like MMOs in particular just absolutely melt your mind. When you play an MMO its like you're putting your brain to sleep most of the time. Any game where you find yourself being able to watch a movie while you play basically.

Id say that heavily depends on what you're doing in an MMO. I know what in FF14 as a white mage I was most definately not on autopilot. I was trying to take in as much info as possible (what's everyone's hp at? where is everyone positioned? do i save the dps or tank? can i afford to stop healing to get a few attacks in? whats my mana pool like? do i need to cast a AoE or target spell? Can i cast this heal before the boss hits me? etc). If you lose you focus for even a second your team could get wiped.

I agree that the little things can get boring and sometimes you do go on autopilot but I like to think MMO's can also help improve important skills (resource management, data acquisition, planning things in advanced, etc)

Video game and gaming in general is an activity of the mind. If you play a lot of sports you get more physically fit even if you aren't doing any other exercise. So why would an activity that primarily takes place in the mind not improve your brain?

This is awesome! Many people dont realize that there is a fundamental difference between complexity and violence in videogames. While it is true that young children can become more aggressive from exposure to violent videogames, it is also true that action games such as FPS can increase your spatial recognition skills, depth perception, reactivity, etc. It just so happens that many of these complex games are also violent. There has been research like this out for a few years. It has yet to gain as much traction as the studies on violence (which are only correlational, to boot!)

I'm surprised it took this long for a study to show what many of us see as a no-brainer (Poor choice of words...)

Let's look not at the content of these action games, but at what they require of the player to be completed.

The player has to complete complex tasks (Dismantle a bomb, reach and hold 3 separate checkpoints, fight off waves of enemies, ect.) often while managing multiple systems and mechanics (Skill cool-downs, reloading, HP, Stamina). This means the new or inexperienced player is dying often, and with this expectation comes the true value of this experience:

Rapid iteration, often with little or no consequence. The player is put in a position to try many different things, and approach situations in creative and interesting ways. It creates an environment where failure is not only an acceptable outcome, but one that's seen as a learning opportunity. In a game like Jak II, when I reach a stage that just flat out owns me, I get excited. It means I get to try a bunch of solutions as they come to me. I take exactly what worked well in each play-through and ditch the aspects of the plan that didn't work out. This is exactly the process for solving problems in the real world. We're taught our whole lives to be afraid of failure, but failure is crucial to improvement. Hundreds of failures precede every great breakthrough science and innovation has ever yielded, and now, finally, kids are growing up with an activity that not only encourages learning from failure, it often necessitates it.

For me there's no question. Video-games challenge us in ways the real world can't. Being able to fail and immediately press a button and try again is a gift. It puts the idea of iteration on a timescale that people of all ages can understand.

TL;DR: Videogames teach us the crucial lesson that a failure is usually a huge step in the right direction.

I find it interesting that in just a matter of weeks of playing Call of Duty, I'm already beginning to learn the concepts of adrenaline control, motion prediction, and plotting the shortest route from point to point as quickly as possible. Also pattern prediction, because fuck all those people who keep stealing my care package.

Don't even get me started on Eve Online. I could literally get an economics degree from that shit.

On the minus side, gaming might make you a total dopamine addict and make your brain impossible to focus on less blatantly rewarding tasks like writing papers, budgeting a household, and talking to other human beings.

Pretty obvious. What disturbs me is that the same people that bitched that violent video games were making kids violent were the same people that said all those learning games that also came out had no effect on kids.